Never mind that last post..

I take it back. They do work. A lot.

I am a very bad blogger. Three posts on my way down here and during my first week in the valley, and nothing since. I have probably alienated my fans with this radio silence.. I feel bad about about the posts' cynicism as well.. That was the homesickness talking. Sorry about the cursing.

A few points on life as a PM Intern in Silicon Valley.

The other day somebody accidentally (i assume) left the keys to their Lexus in the breakroom fridge. Someone made a comment about how the Lexus driver must be 40 years-old or something. You know.. losing their mind with age. It was news to me that 40 is old, let alone senile. That's the madness of this place. People run around chasing the dream, obsessing over the latest tech and the value of their stock, then lose their minds after a few years. It takes a real passion for technology to succeed here without going bonkers. The competition among and within the companies is intense and unrelenting, which produces some amazing technology and a ton of wealth, but not without psychological cost.

Research only gets you so far. Even if you had the budget to plop down $5k for every IDC and Gartner report relevant to the business questions that you are trying to answer, you still could find holes in your analysis large enough to drive your colleague's BMW SUV through. In b-school we have appendices at the end of our case studies that contain data from which the quantitative answers can be derived. I liken this to business tee-ball. In the real world, people constantly make judgment calls. In order to not make stupid decisions, talking to people who have informed opinions is so very important. Yeah sample size is small.. Yeah those people have vested interests.. Yeah this is not hard data.. But the shocker for me this summer has been that often hard data is a myth, even when there are millions of dollars on the line.

I gave 10 presentations this summer. Audiences were not passive as they are in b-school, where a large audience sits quietly for 15 minutes, asks lame jargon-laden questions during the designated Q&A period, and gives you a round of applause at the end. In a few of my read-outs, most of my points were challenged in real time. When I presented to the engineers for example, it took 30 minutes to get past the second slide. I found that the business value of these sessions was not in my presentation itself, but in the discussion that came out of it. The ideas that were formed and the mindshare that was established over the course of my presenting across the organization will be the enduring mark left by my time here.

And.. living in a hotel sucks. The 25 pounds I gained over the course of the summer are empirical proof.